Curiosity Rover Takes A Bunch Of Cool Self-Portraits

As NASA's Curiosity rover prepares to take her first long drive to a spot called Glenelg, her keepers back on Earth continue to test and inspect several of the robot's cameras and high-tech tools on its arm. These instruments, which include a drill, a camera and the dust removal tool, will eventually be used to collect and analyze samples from the ground.

In a series of "checkouts," the one-ton rolling laboratory stretched its seven-foot robotic arm and snapped a bunch of pictures of itself. The images were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MaHLI, which is designed to take very close, high-resolution images of rock and soil at Curiosity's landing site, Gale Crater.